Two more N17 suspects arrested

ATHENS, Greece (CNN) -- Police have made more arrests in their ongoing campaign to rout the terrorist organisation November 17 before Athens hosts the 2004 Olympic games, law enforcement officials said on Saturday.

Officials did not release the names of two suspects apprehended outside Athens, but said the pair -- aged 30 and 35 -- were being brought to police headquarters in the Greek capital.

The alleged head of the elusive November 17 made his first court appearance on Friday after being arrested along with five of the group's alleged foot soldiers -- including one who police said admitted killing a British brigadier two years ago.

But Alexandros Giotopoulos, a leftist radical born in Paris in 1944 and accused of masterminding the group, has refused to acknowledge any connection with November 17.

Police spokesman Lefteris Economou said that authorities have ample evidence against him, however, including matching his fingerprints to a weapons cache and a proclamation featuring corrections that matched his handwriting.

EXTRA INFORMATION Chronology: N17 terror attacks

Police Commissioner Fotis Nassiakos said that another of the men arrested earlier this week, 30-year-old Vasslis Xyros, had confessed to killing Brigadier Stephen Saunders, Britain's senior attaché in Greece, on June 8, 2000.

Two assailants riding on a motorcycle shot Saunders, 53, four times while he was travelling to work during the morning rush hour on the busy Kiffisias Avenue in Athens. He died hours later.

In addition to Giotopoulos and Vasslis Xyros, police are holding Christodoulos Xyros, 46, the brother of Vasslis, and Dionyssis Georgiabes, 26.

Authorities announced Friday they had also arrested two other men, Vassilis Georgatos and Theologous Psaradellis, both of whom appeared before the prosecutor with Giotopoulos.

Saunders was shot four times

The two men, police said, had confessed to a string of November 17 attacks.

All were arrested after Savas Xyros, thought to be related to the Xyros brothers, was severely wounded June 29 in a botched attack when the bomb he was carrying exploded at the port of Piraeus.

Police have long said that the November 17 terrorist group was probably a small, close-knit group. The organisation is blamed for killing 23 people, including Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens, in 1975.

The group is named after the date of a student uprising in 1973 against the military junta then ruling Greece.